Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: With candidates from both parties supporting corporate-minded education reform to varying degrees, and with media often skittish about stepping outside the box of the candidates' views, this election season doesn't look good for advocates of strong public education. We’ll buck the trend with an interview with Diane Ravitch, professor and historian of education at New York University, and the author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. Also on the show: U.S. negotiators have been extra secretive about a trade deal they've been [...]
Feb
03
2012
Vijay Prashad on Iran, Jeff Ballinger on Apple
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: U.S. media are abuzz with stories about the growing threat Iran poses to the U.S. The stories seem to embellish recent remarks by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who says Iran is a larger threat than al Qaeda and is prepared to carry out attacks in the Western Hemisphere, including in the US. We'll be joined by Vijay Prashad, Director of International Studies at Trinity College to talk about Iran. Also on the show: The New York Times series on working conditions at Apple suppliers in China--conditions that have reportedly driven [...]
Feb
01
2012
The Trade Debate That Wasn't Reported
Critics of deals outnumbered more than 4-to-1 in NYT, WSJ
By Todd Tucker
In the 16 months leading up to the congressional vote on a set of trade deals with Korea, Colombia and Panama in mid-October, news reporting on the agreements scarcely mentioned that critics existed; when they were acknowledged, their objections were frequently mischaracterized. With media doing little to evaluate misleading claims made by the trade pacts’ proponents, all three were approved by Congress by considerable margins. There were two major points that opponents of the trio of deals—including labor, environmental, consumer and even Tea Party groups—consistently emphasized in reports, press releases, letters and direct outreach to reporters. First, these trade deals [...]
Oct
21
2011
Todd Tucker on trade deals, Karuna Jaggar on Think Before You Pink
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The congressional passage of so-called 'free trade' agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama was met with applause by many in the corporate media. The cheering was not only for the corporate friendly provisions of the bills, but for what journalists insist was the bipartisan support for the legislation. Todd Tucker of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch will join us with a different view of the trade pacts. Also on the show: From pink dog toys to pink...handguns? There's no escaping Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Sure, some of it's crass, but it raises a [...]
Oct
01
2011
Trade, Jobs and Sales Jobs
Failing to do the math on export promises
Corporate media have spent the last few years portraying the federal budget deficit, not jobs, as the public’s consuming worry, despite poll after poll revealing people unsurprisingly more interested in getting or holding onto a paycheck (FAIR Media Advisory, 8/1/11). Only now that official Washington turns its sights to the issue have media “discovered” the unemployment crisis—George Stephanopoulos now refers matter-of-factly to “the country’s top issue, jobs” (Good Morning America, 8/16/11)—but the same skewed priorities are on display. Bad enough the glib nature of their attentions, reflected in New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s ingenuous “feeling” (8/27/11), based on visiting [...]
May
01
2011
ABC's 'Made in America' a Shoddy Product
Holding consumers, not corporations, responsible for missing jobs
ABC World News’ five-part “Made in America” series (2/28-3/4/11) purported not so much to explore as to answer the question of how to create jobs for unemployed Americans, by exhorting those same Americans to buy more U.S.-manufactured products. Not just any jobs, but “America’s manufacturing workforce, our true grit,” contended anchor Diane Sawyer (2/17/11). And at near negligible cost: “If every one of us spent an extra $3.33, just $3.33 on U.S.-made goods every year,” Sawyer (estimated annual income: $12 to $15 million) told viewers, “that would create almost 10,000 new jobs in this country.” The implication that consumer choice [...]
Nov
12
2010
William Greider on G-20 & trade, Ali Gharib on Iran & Wikileaks
By CounterSpin
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Coverage of the G-20 summit in Seoul is squarely focused on trade deals and U.S. relations with China. But is the whole discussion of globalization, China and trade missing the point? William Greider makes that case in a new piece in the Nation magazine. He'll join us to talk about it. Also on CounterSpin today: There's growing talk of a U.S. military attack on Iran. And some elite journalists, who think they have found evidence of Iranian interference in Iraq, are doing their part to beat war drums. If the script sounds familiar, that's [...]
Sep
24
2010
Reza Aslan on Turkey, Todd Tucker on free trade agreements
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Turkey voted on a package of constitutional reforms this month. The message you heard in much of the media coverage is that the victory for the ruling Islamic party, Justice and Development, is more evidence that Turkey is drifting in the wrong direction, shunning the West and playing to its Islamic majority. But does this analysis make sense? We'll talk to author and professor Reza Aslan. Also on the show: More so-called free trade agreements are on the White House agenda; Obama says they're the way to increase exports, which is the way to [...]
